Stephen Malkmus Quotes

We're probably a couple of freaks who've created their own little universe, are living in our own little world and that's the only place where we can survive.

Lou Reed is something like a personal favorite of mine, but you could always put me into that drawer of singers who can't really sing, who speak their songs.

If a voice is just too nice, without an edge, it kinda all flows by. You forget it. You don't listen to the lyrics.

I'm sort of socially inept, so music is my way to connect to people. It's a means of socializing and having a life. Otherwise I wouldn't bother. I would just make home recordings and play them for myself. And that's not really healthy.

A good voice isn't so important. It's more important to sound really unique.

I'm not sure if you can blame everything on the American way of life, but the United States are big. So, if you have a lot of people there, the percentage of stupid people is bound to be higher.

I think most musicians know if they make the same record twice, even if they say they don't.

I know the world doesn't need maybe another of [a particular type of song] - the same thing again - but you can't help yourself. And some people like it, but you kind of know in your heart that it's a lesser version of what you've done before. But maybe it has a good tempo, or it feels fresh, but it's still not.

I was a kid, I loved music, that was our social thing. That's what we bonded on. That's what my Saturday nights were, looking to see what bands were playing. And some of those people were the coolest people ever. I want to participate in that. And I hope other people feel that and they're like, "Yeah man, this is part of it, this is why I love music."

Despite my own doubts of being marketable or crushworthy, my goal was to write a record of peppy pop songs, hopefully without annoying anybody.

We're not on a desperate mission to write chart compatible stuff.

The lyrics are different from Nick Cave songs and lyrics. His songs are very narrative.

We always did our own mixing.

I didn't really like confessional poetry or things. They seemed sort of dated to me, or just corny.

I like a narrative, even if it's fractured, or kind of psychedelic. But my favorite thing is if I hear words and I close my eyes and the connotations or the image I get in my head, combine with the sound of them - sometimes phonetics. I'm just stringing those together.

I never decided to start singing, to be a singer.

Something taken off the page can sound great, I guess. Usually it doesn't. It seems like lately Pitchfork is trying to champion lyric writers more.

I guess the majority of people who want to ban certain musicians are the ones who are so proud of everything America stands for.

I still hate [the Eagles]…. There’s levels of evil in it to me.

I think the focus of the media changes. At the moment the more electronic stuff like trip-hop was the flavor of the month, just a little while ago. It all depends on the angle, from which point of view you see it.

Almost every band has somebody who's the main songwriter and who has a vision, a very clear idea of how a song should be.

There's no point that an album should sound like a watered down version of another album.

But, then again, I wouldn't call myself an indie-rock supporter even if there are some really good bands out there and there will always be some real good new bands.

I like that band Get Hustle. They're cool live. I haven't heard their records, though.

If you want to be negative about the whole thing you can say all guitar bands after the Beatles were just a waste of time because the Beatles were the best. I think it's far better to give new records a try.

I don't want to be in Mötley Crüe or something.

[As a frontman ] I'm going to wear leather pants and get blowjobs in the studio. That would be nice. They are definitely not cool, but I like them. I don't listen to them, but I like them when I hear them on the radio, normally.

Berlin is just an affordable European city that's supposed to be cool. There's nothing too deep about it.

Yeah, on the records, the guitars are made melodic, and I try to make it memorable. There's not much just wanking, to be honest - it's mostly melodic parts. I try not to play too many notes. It's just more instrumental music. It's a totally valid criticism if you don't like that kind of thing. It also is maybe a little anachronistic or unnecessary in a certain way.

There's no reason to stop. Who knows what's around the bend? To participate, meet new people. It's mostly other musicians and people like you, or anybody I meet who's in this, that keeps me going.

If there can be some paradigm shift thing that you can be part of, that's cool.

My wife says that I changed people's lives or ways of thinking and that I should always be proud and grateful. If I'm dismissive of what we do sometimes, a little bit, she's like, "I was a fan, you changed my life," or whatever. That's what she says.

Оur music, it's an acquired taste. It's almost cult, even at our level. It can mean nothing to somebody and it can mean everything to somebody else.

Traditionally, when we lived here [in Portland], we have a record player in the living room, and there's lots of stuff playing, all different kinds of music. I don't listen to any of those Internet radio things. I have iTunes on my thing, but I've never bought a single thing on it. Except for "Call Me Maybe," for the kids or whatever. Carly Rae Jepsen.

When I see four young kids in a band, I think, That looks really fun, no matter how shitty they are. You develop your own thing, and get excited about your band name. It's all so harmless.

If you'd rather learn how to ride a horse or something, I would say do that. That'll keep you out of trouble. You would think a band would get you in trouble, but I think it's the opposite.

It's hard to think back. I didn't even know I was going to do it, make actual records. But I was always making up songs, once I figured out that you could do it. I think it's pretty much the same, but there's less urge to get it moving out there. There was a time when it seemed like it was really super important to the audience and now it's just medium-important for people to like us. But that's okay.

I did some writing. I was just taking the kids to school. I did a couple things and we did some tours. It was a lot of downtime.

I've lost my writing skills since college. I couldn't write a book. It would take a long time.

Besides, going on tour and playing songs and arranging things, going to practice, it's all I know to be productive.

It's just a compulsion to create something new and stay busy. I don't know how to do anything else. It was never exactly right. Those records came out in spite of their flaws. And because of their flaws they were good.

There's something in life that's cool, it's relatively cheap, and fun, and populist. Even when it's elitist.

Most people want to be seen or heard. You want to shine. That's my way of shining.

I think it's just entertainment for people that are interested in the form. To sing along to and be psyched by.

What I love about music, when you can look at something and be like, "Wow, what's this all about?" You can't really picture what these people look like - is it one guy, or a band making music in a garage?

Everyone wants to be loved, generally. If you released a record and nobody said anything, if you didn't get any feedback from people you don't know, i.e. the press, you'd be sort of upset. To me, any press is good press.

Like the song "Stereo", to me that's like, kind of hip-hop in that slacker way. There's some slackerisms mixed in with that stuff, but it wasn't really conscious, I guess. When things would get more typical rock'n'roll that was my fallback to go to those kind of lyrics instead of the alternatives.

It's easy to be negatively funny about personalities in the media. It's just kind of a cheap laugh.

The earlier stuff is more like "this is happening to me," but now there are more songs that are accusatory or something, or more declaratory. I don't know where that voice comes from, like, "I've been down the road, we've been there and done that." That's sort of like a tougher style, or a less vulnerable style.

You know, the songs that are self-conscious or jerky, they are that way, but the other ones aren't, so that's a good thing. Some of the songs are Beck-jokey, but the others, they have heart in them.